Netflix has released a host of space stories in the last few months. Is it because the company has expanded the scope of their “new frontier” status from streaming content to another planet? That would be amazing, but clearly it’s because you can build small sets with few people, perfect for pandemic filmmaking. But as long as their space stories are as entertaining as Space Sweepers or as morally complex as Stowaway, Netflix can work on that rocket to Mars for all I care.
Commander Barnett (Toni Collette) and her two crewmates biologist David (Daniel Dae Kim) and medical researcher Zoe (Anna Kendrick) are embarking on a scientific research mission to the growing Mars Colony funded by the Hyperion company. On a routine check of the space station, Barnett opens up a panel to discover Michael (Shamier Anderson), an unconscious but living breathing man stuck inside the ship. Emphasis on breathing by the way: because Michael’s discovery threatens the long term viability of the trip to the Martian colony.
Philosophers should thank the space moviemaking industry. All of the great space sagas pose ethical and moral quandaries philosophers spend their lives thinking about. Stowaway’s big questions are well worn but always interesting ones: do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and what does it mean to be human? Stowaway makes the smart decision to hide us from anyone but the 4 people on board the ship: Hyperion then becomes a faceless corporation motivated by profits only, and the fate of these 4 people lies firmly on board the ship, and cannot be dictated by a faceless group of middle managers. The conversation’s are filled with moral dilemmas as each potential solution gets exhausted, leaving fewer and fewer options for the crew. Some people come off more callous than others, but the movie handles their decisions with grace, making it easy to empathize and understand their decision making. Stowaway arrives at an answer to some of these questions, but along the way it plays out the scenario as long as it can so the place it arrives feels earned.
As you can see, this is more of a thinking person’s sci-fi movie. No space lasers here unfortunately. However, by spending that time letting us get to know these people early on, we emotionally invest ourselves into a fateful spacewalk that takes place the last 30-40 minutes of the movie. What results is a gripping, quiet slow rappelling across a well constructed set that makes it easy to understand how risky this space walk is going to be. Each grapple up or down makes you hold your breath even tighter, as one slip up means the moral dilemma becomes more and more dire. Props to the 4 cast members: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, Toni Collette, and Shamier Anderson for making us care about algae blooms, carbon dioxide filters, O2 canisters and photovoltaic lenses because of their implications on the fate of the 4 humans space walking to solve one of humanity’s greatest moral dilemmas.
Netflix has gotten quite good at remixing ideas from earlier films and modernizing them for a new generation. Stowaway has pieces of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine all over it’s DNA. But instead of Captain America, The Scarecrow, the Crouching Tiger Lady, Scorpion, and a mutant, we have the leader of the Barden Bella’s a cappella group and a woman possessed by the devil. Yikes! Poor Daniel Dae Kim and Shamier Anderson better watch their backs or they’ll get sung to death to Black Street’s discography.